Speeches by Edwards.

“Thank you for clarifying. We are all quite interested in how we can move this situation into something that might hopefully work, because it is not sounding like it works. Toby, you have just described 26 red stamps all over your paperwork. That seems distinctly analogue. We should be moving, I would have hoped, to a d…”

“We have just heard that there is a lot of red tape and there are quite a number of red stamps. We now have red lines and negotiations. We have a patchwork of product regulations and requirements that, quite frankly, we need to smooth out somehow. We have conformity assessments being called for by Make UK and the Britis…”

“Alastair, I just wanted to come back to a point that you made. You represent road haulage firms across the whole of the United Kingdom, and they are responsible for moving goods across this country—import and export. You are saying that you have never had a conversation, in your memory, with the Department for Business…”

“That is very helpful.”

“Is there any inkling as to when we might be rejoining it? Have you heard anything on the grapevine about making sure that we can re-enter the electricity trading element?”

“It was targeted, rather than a blanket approach of checking everything.”

“With your permission, Chair, I would like to revisit something that was just mentioned.”

“You are confident, but it will not be any time soon.”

“Happy new year, Mr Speaker. Access to a local GP is vital for every community, and residents in Shenstone and Stonnall are rightly concerned about a consultation that proposes reducing services at Westgate surgery from five days a week to three. That raises concerns about the long-term future of the practice, and risks…”

“Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and happy new year. Although I welcome the road safety strategy, it sadly ignores school minibus safety, despite my raising this issue with the Department last year. I have been campaigning with my constituents Liz and Steve Fitzgerald since 2023, following the tragic loss of their daug…”

“Does that not still imply, though, that the assumption is that they were convicted on the basis of software that they still potentially believe to work? Is that not sort of the default you can read into that, on the basis of that correspondence? It is pretty odd, isn’t it, to be saying, “Well, you need to give us more …”

“I want to come back on some of the figures we have heard. We have 1,000 convictions that were being considered, and 611 eligible. That is about a 60:40 ratio. It is an absurdly high figure of potential wrongdoing or fraud. Have there been any thoughts on what a reasonable figure is? Are we not going here on the presump…”

“Exactly.”

“So what I think you are saying is that they had not fully understood and taken into account your actual position of not being an employee.”

“So it was like a year that you were waiting?”

“We are interested in understanding more about the timeframe, the timeline, that you went through. You applied to the Horizon Convictions Redress Scheme. We have heard that it took you four months, Mr Eaton. Was that something that you were expecting to take that long, and what happened to your wife in her experience of…”

“I will move on to the speed of the payments. As of November last year, 87% of all the HSS cases had received an offer—84% of late claims and 100% of original HSS cases. Given that a number of people have still not had an offer, when do you think that they will or when will you finalise those payments through the scheme…”

“At this stage, do you think that the administration should still sit with the Post Office? There are a lot of sub-postmasters who do not think that you should be administering the redress scheme at all. Obviously, there have been some discussions about whether that should be transferred to DBT. Do you think it should t…”

“We heard in earlier evidence that the Post Office is supportive of transferring the HSS over to DBT, but the timeframe was cited—we have about a month until the current application deadline closes. Are you in discussions? Have you decided that that is what you are going to do? Where do you sit on that at the moment?”

“This may be a complicated question given the information that you have just shared, but how many applications have you so far had, or think you have had, relating to the Capture convictions? Actually, we probably need to broaden that and talk about software failure or automated transfer of funds perhaps, because we are…”